Anthony Antonellis

Is it possible to confuse a Poland Spring bottle of water with a $300.00 Poland Spring bottle of water stuffed with a Chinese knockoff wristband? Nestlé is hedging its bets on a current trademark infringement claim against artist Anthony Antonellis, claiming that average consumers can’t tell the difference between their bottled water and his, largely because his work belongs on a website URL formerly owned by the conglomerate.

At this point, 2014 is still a wash; trending words included “asphyxiation” and “misogyny”, but the most-typed phrase was an emoji heart. Naturally, we turn to GIFs. Here are the year’s “GIF of the Day” highlights, in creative standouts, minor cultural milestones, and mostly, things we couldn’t stop thinking about because they were so weird.

These GIFs were originally made for Sheroes, a limited run art party in Toronto that hosted performances and screenings responding to a lauded woman. The number of amazing GIFs made for the Dolly Parton themed party is truly astounding, but these by Anthony Antonellis really stand out. That’s partly just because they’re so weird and creepy, but also the motion of these heads really activates the image. They move like bobble heads and have the same effect—except I guess that most bobbles won’t cast a reflection in a car wind shield near as nice as the water pictured here.

Tom Moody has complained that there’s not enough analysis in our GIF of the Day posts. He thinks the Anthony Antonellis GIF I posted a few days back lacks compelling movement and content. I stand by the pick. The image isn’t supposed to have any deep meaning—it’s supposed to look like spamm, and it succeeds—but Moody brings up a fair point. Why bother posting all these images if we don’t look at them critically?

We’re going to change that. Once every three weeks or so we’ll take a look back on the GIFs we’ve posted and talk about what we think succeeds and what we think falls flat. Tom Moody’s Sketch_J3 is now on that list.

Now you can buy trading cards of female net artists. But cheerleading, really? Sorry, but I would’ve preferred a deck that shows actual stats where artists get HP and special attacks, not “cheer highlights.” [Etsy, via Anthony Antonellis]

The International Center for Photography will close its Midtown museum in January 2015. [Artnet]